Colloquial Cambridge 2014

How should we design digital systems that maintain our analogue sense of place?

Colloquial Cambridge is a set of maps of where places are said to be, not where they are prescribed to be. Place may be a building, an activity or a feeling. The sense of place radiates and decays.

For each map, public photographs were retrieved from Flickr where they were both tagged at a location within Cambridge and described by the keyword associated with the sense of place. The map is then an accumulation of the located photographs, removed from the familiar physical context of the city.

Produced for the Culture Quest project, co‑ordinated by the University of Cambridge Museums, in collaboration with Amanda Gower of Active Design Lab. Supported by the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts — Nesta, Arts & Humanities Research Council and public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. The street map remains © OpenStreetMap contributors.

A selection of maps are available via Flickr.